Day 4: St. Patrick's Day

'ello everyone! i am writing you from Wycillfe Hall, Oxford! i have been very busy checking out my hometown here. so far i have checked out about 6 pubs and one being The Eagle and Child (which you lit fans will recoginze as the home of the 'inklings' which Tolkien and Lewis) and as i walked by i do believe that i took in alittle bit of tolkien and lewis! last night carissa jason hope sam topher and i all went out to a pub and had dinner. i had a steak and guniess pie which was the best thing that i have had since i have been here. (and a pint of cider....well alcoholic which iste first one that i have had by myself, cause i dont drink and most i havent really liked but this one i really liked and was able t actually finish! when i go out i just either share with carissa or try a sip of the guys' which i9 havent been too terribly impressed with but they have loved!) cause let me tell you! this english food is a little bland and not very impressive espacially coming from a cafeteria is about or worse than Wally's! the one thing that i did like was their stew and dumplings.
the sights of Oxford are amazing! everything here is about 200 years old or older. our school is the baby of the colleges at 140 years. there about 20 some different colleges in oxford, but the one that we think as oxford is usually Christ Church, which i got to visit saturday! and it was aamzing! the garden is what inspired 'Alice in wonderland' and the staircase is where harry potter first walked into hogwarts. but the beauty of hte school is not just in fanticay. it is a ll goregous and awe inspireing. i cant believe that people go to school there! i would just be in awe everytiime i went ot class to think of all the peopel who graced those halls and shaped thinking within english history. i digress.
we started classes bright and early on saturday getting up and in class at 10. Chapman is amazing. he is really a genius. his lectures are so animated and captivating that you wonder where the hour has goen. we have 2 main a day with him and then 2 other classes that we choose. but those arent everyday. Chapman does all this lectures by memory and no notes what si ever and likes to draw for us on the white board dates, people and maps and such. he knows soo much i just ooze! i think everything is soo facinating! i have known some of what we have discussed but he puts faces and situations to things that make histry and dates/events so much easier to follow.
today after class carissa and i took the blue sky and followed it because it had been grey and cold and raining. well what do we expect we are after all in england. but i thought that it rained in seattle and it never rained while i was there so i was hoping it was the same situation, however it has been a big no. but really i havent paid much attention to the rain and it doesnt bother me. i may have developed webbed feet like the british, cuase everyone else seems to be bothered but me i dont care and keep going on. but that is what you have to do. so today when the sky and sun popped up we deiced to claim it as our own and walk about. we walked about forever, well carissa took her nose ring out cause it was yucky so trying to put it back in after cleaning she couldnt so we serached oxford for a tattoo place to get it in. we found one after asking a bunch of people and running around a shoppping center. we walked by the oxford castle and around a bunch of bends for an hour and got happly lost. we ended up along a canal and walked along that with house boats on either side with ducks. carissa said it best when she said that it seemed like we were finally discovering oxford cause we seemed isolated to the downtown area where hte pubs and colleges are. finally we got off the beaten track and discovered more. we walked further and found a huge meadow which had ponies running free and a lack in the background. we couldnt believe it. it was a park where the horses ran free with you as you walked! it was soo weird. we finally made our way back and here i am talking with youfine folk! i pressed something on this weird key board and got italics sorry i dont know how to change it! the key board is basically like ours but a little different and those little differences really make it very hard to type! anyway talk you all later!